menardian

[jazzfish]

Language, Languages, and Dialect in Aspects, an essay by Andrew 'Draco Concordans' Plotkin. I got to the line near the end of the essay where he reiterates the essay's secret title and I started laughing so hard I couldn't explain myself for about a minute, because GODDAMMIT MIKE.

Even if you've not read Aspects, if you've any interest in linguistics or conlangs ('constructed languages') I imagine it's a fascinating read. (And then you'll want to go read Aspects, but that's only proper. I'm itching for a reread myself.)

Also a shout-out to my ENGL1204 teacher, Dr Elizabeth Richey, who I believe was at Tech on loan from somewhere in South Carolina. She introduced me to Borges, without which I would not have cracked up nearly so much. As someone whose name I have forgotten (probably on Making Light) said, the real benefit of a classical education is that you get all the jokes.

Comments

[reedrover]

If you are talking Jose Luis Borges, then I’m right there with you. He’s amazing and difficult and twisty in both original and translation. If you have Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols, it helps with some of the weirder parts a lot.

[jazzfish]

(Jorge) Yes, absolutely! Dr Richey handed out a copy of "The Aleph" for class, and I was enthralled enough to immediately dig up a copy of his collection Ficciones. I loved "The Library of Babel" and "The Garden of Forking Paths" in particular but pretty much all of his stories are just so great.